Ode
by SilverCascade
Summary: Castiel thinks to a certain demon whilst sitting beside Fred at the end of Hunteri Heroici. Megstiel-themed reflection. Ficlet.


He wondered, sometimes, about what had happened to Meg. Of course, reuniting with the Winchesters, his friends, had taken up most of his time since he escaped from Purgatory. He had shared a few celebratory beers with Sam and Dean the night after his return, despite the fact they did not affect him in any way. Dean had been on edge that evening.

_Why does he hold suspicion against me?_ he thought. _I am his friend. I am both of their friends._

But he had brushed it off as petty wonder at his return, and assumed it was another little quirk of the humans; he had learnt a lot about them, but he still did not know everything. _Perhaps the rattled edge was how they greeted all of their lost friends,_ his mind whispered, _or maybe it is just you, after everything you have done._

However, thoughts of his thorny beauty were all that filled his mind as he sat beside Fred Jones, the poor, psychic man who had lost his mind to the insistent hand of age.

The case, his first case, had been eventful to say the least. He had not understood the fascination and loyalty held by the men about children's cartoons. Not at first. But it was all right now, now he understood; the humans' search for an absent Father seemed to manifest itself in the form of animal-related animations. Castiel gave a quick nod and admitted to himself that the irony was not wasted on him.

_It is fruitless to search for something is no longer present,_ he thought. _For angels and humans alike._

The darkness crept into his thoughts; it was not the occasional bout of black followed by a bright blue light, the kind that jolted him from his thoughts and left him with a feeling of forgetting something important. No, this darkness was familiar, the creeping tendrils curling out of his unconscious mind, once muddled and broken. It held a memory, a face, and despite all that had happened to him since their last meeting, the angel smiled.

Her hair, dark and tumbling and her eyes, glimmering with life when not cased in the black veil; this was the image filling his thoughts. A flash of white skin, a blush upon her cheek and the smoky, inhuman darkness of her true form engaged his mind. Castiel wondered what had happened after the fiasco with the Leviathans. Was his demon in trouble, or had she slipped away? The angel did not know, but he felt something in his mind give. Intuition took him.

_Something is not right._

It was to be expected the Winchesters did not care; to them, she was just another 'black-eyed bitch', and it did not surprise him that they had not searched for her. But to the angel, even with his sanity returned, she still meant something. She still stood as someone worth saving.

If something was wrong and she was hurt, he would feel wholly responsible.

_But Meg is a demon,_ he thought. _She can look after herself._ Frankly, he did not wish to see her again, not fully. He wondered if she would even like him now as a hunter, rather than the angel who admired the bees or kissed hard against the cold, crumbling walls.

The thoughts, swept up by the most certainly human emotion affecting him, turned back to her whereabouts. _If Crowley still has her, I would have seen her with the prophet,_ he reasoned. _He would want to dangle my gem before me, I am sure._ But if she were trapped between the flaming walls of Hell, where flesh burned and Crowley's demons chanted their twisted song, then that posed another problem.

_Meg is a demon,_ Castiel's sanity told him. _An unspeakable beast reigning over the lowest of the low. At least the Leviathans have some sense of pride and status. Demons have none. They lie and cheat and steal and kill_ _and you dare fornicate with them?_

"They are not much different from the humans," he said aloud, "and the apple does not fall far from the tree."

Thoughts of the red apples, shiny and glistening in the hot sun as their weight became too much to bear, heaving off the trees, made him think of her lips. How exquisite it had felt to kiss them once, and oh how he wanted more. _The cliché of the forbidden fruit,_ he thought, shaking his head. _How the humans describe their emotions… such strange ways of which I have much to learn._

Sitting beside the great psychic, whom he knew to be the better being, Castiel felt alone. The glorious finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony hummed in the back of his head, but he did not pay it any attention. It was one thing to have friends like Sam and Dean, and quite another to feel so crushingly lonely, to crave a touch so sublime that the mere thought weakened you.

His eyes, large and alert, drifted to the clock. Enough time had passed; a good three hours later Fred still seemed at peace, and Castiel found the melody soothing. He drew it close like a blanket, thinking to how much he appreciated its presence in a time where his mind was at arms. The angel was not one for music, not usually, but this seemed like the single occasion where he would make an exception.

_I wonder where you are, my dark beauty,_ he thought, losing himself in the familiar rhythm. _I wonder just how you are._

He tried to quieten his thoughts and listen.


End file.
